“A.B.C.: Always be closing.” Everyone in our sphere knows this as a common trading mantra for fantasy football, but one of the origins of this phrase comes from the sales world. Specifically, there is a scene from the David Mamet play, Glengarry Glen Ross, that makes mention of this phrase. In this scene, we see the most sympathetic character in the play, Levene, on his last legs at the land sales company he works for. He is on the brink of being fired, as a sales veteran who isn’t cutthroat enough to keep up with the younger salesmen. He and Roma, one of his sales partners and competitors, discuss a sale Levene just made – his first in months:
LEVENE: And we sit there. I got the pen out…
ROMA: “Always be closing…”
LEVENE: That's what I'm saying. The old ways. The old ways… Convert him. Sell him. Make him sign the check.
Now that we’ve gotten through the NFL Draft, a lot of young whippersnappers will be rising in the NFL ranks soon and possibly pushing some old men on rosters nearly out the door. Potential is always more tantalizing to fantasy owners and NFL teams alike than track record, and we could see plenty of rookies usurp veterans this training camp.
By breaking down players’ scores through our Net Expected Points (NEP) metric -- a way of contextualizing box score production by associating a historical value based on down and distance -- we can see which of these players deserves to be canned and who deserves to have coffee.
Which NFL vets have underperformed and are in danger of losing their jobs?